I feel that Grant Morrison is one of the greatest comic book writers of the modern age. He's fiercely intelligent, boldly innovative, and full of weird imagination. I know he loses some readers with his emergent, post-modern approach, but I feel he delivers the most original and well-thought-out superhero material of our age. I've decided to make a list of some of my favorite Morrison runs.
This is probably Grant's masterpiece. It's an ode to counter-culture. Morrison takes you on a journey through the history of outsiders in western civilization using a covert operations team built of magicians, delinquents, and transvestites. Eventually ripped off by The Matrix, and a comic favorite of hipsters world-wide. The Invisibles may be one of the greatest statements made in the medium.
In my opinion, this is the best Superman story written in the Modern Age. It reaffirms Superman's place in pop culture as a fictional representation of humanity's best qualities. Using Mort Weisinger's Silver Age Superman formulas as a base, Morrison delivered a story about a demi-god with an incredible life that was also anchored in human sentimentality. A beautiful story.
Grant changed this team from Paul Kupperberg's post-Claremont/Byrne superhero soap opera into a surreal epic. Believing the team should be an edgy celebration of society's misfits, Morrison made the team from the handicapped and mad. Using surrealist films like Jan Svankmajer's Alice as source material instead of other current superhero team books made this run unique. A truly original superhero team.
This is the first thing I read from Morrison when I was a kid. This was a big deal when it first came out because for a decade before JLA we had the post Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League where the original seven members were only partially represented. Grant's JLA was the first time the original seven joined back up to take on global-level superhero threats. A real back-to-basics approach to superhero comics, Grant's JLA is still fun and relevant. I also believe this to be the spine that connects all his mainstream DC work together.
A meta-fictional masterwork within the superhero genre, Animal Man was one of those series that changed the way comics were written. It contains a human base with a believable family and friends structure for Animal Man along with the bizarre concepts Morrison is known for. It gave the DC Universe its limbo and gave hippies everywhere a good role model. Animal Man is an exemplary model for late 80s/early 90s superhero comics.
A lot of people were puzzled by this story-arc, but I loved every page. A shadowy group of international villains attacks Batman's mind, pumps him full of drugs, and sends him wandering through Gotham as a transient. It's a really surreal odyssey through the mind of a man who had to change himself into something different to fight crime. A creative use of Silver Age Batman continuity and the most original Batman story I've ever read (and I've been reading Bats for a long time). This IS a great Batman story.
This is yet another series that a lot of people had trouble with. Extremely fast-paced and emergent, this series lost some people just by how quickly it moved. If you stick with it and pay attention to Morrison's work, you'll see a really intelligent meta-fictional tale. A world that was too realistic and dark was eaten by a rotting Darkseid so Superman could wish for a better world for the entire DCU. A statement about how and why superhero comics are written.
Grant's first DC crossover written to supplement his run on JLA. This looked into the far future of the DC Universe as each series got to print an issue #1,000,000 to surmise what comics would be like further down the road. A lot of plot points explored here rear their heads in Grant's later work (like Solar's appearance in All-Star Superman). A fun crossover that gave creators the freedom to be creative.
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